Wednesday, July 8, 2009

When I was a kid, there was nothing funnier than finding a stupid kid to sit across from me on the teeter-totter, teasing him for a few minutes with some professional style teetering, then bailing off so the kid on the other end would slam to the ground and smack his naive tailbone into the ground sitting on the 2x12 treated board. Or how about the 30 foot high swingsets that were so cool that you could swing so high that you would get slack in the chain as you snapped back towards the ground? The chains weren't covered with that sissy plastic chain coating, it was REAL metal links spaced just right so some unsuspecting long-haired girl could get her hair caught. And there weren't those diaper shaped seats either, we had (evidently) the rest of the 2x12 board from the teeter-totter to sit on. Of course there was hard black asphalt under everything in case you slipped off the swing. I am not saying this part was cool, but without fail, every year some dumbass kid would fall off the swing and we would all gather 'round while the ambulance carted little Timmy away. Whatever happened to little Timmy?

We also had the monster metal slide from hell. Probably 20 feet tall, and on a hot day, the tin at the top would heat up to a thigh-blistering (what seemed like) 250 degrees. When you would try to slide down with shorts on, your thighs would stick and make that "skreet, skreet" noise until blistering skin provided the needed lubricant to make it to the bottom.

Also gone is the tetherball, that could strategically be used to bonk an unsuspecting opponent in the head with the ball. Not to mention the times when you went to fist the ball and you missed and hit the rope and wrapped the ball around your arm giving you a mega snake bite! The other formerly popular playground piece of equipment is the merry-go-round. It is where we learned dizzy can be fun, and even more fun when it is someone else trying to jump off or on at full speed.

What I am getting at, is all these things are gone from the playground because some uber-protective parents (probably Timmy's) complained. So now schools, parks and day care centers have removed any piece of equipment that is potentially harmful. They find it their duty to protect us from anything that may cause us to learn a life lesson. We have come to expect authority figures to pad our world so we are not hurt physically, mentally and now... financially.

Hence my connection to the Obama bailout plan, it all started with Timmy....